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“... that that is what they are. Ideology means Marxism (and especially that ‘erring colleague’, Christopher Hill), but Elton reserves some of his ammunition for the alternative, liberal determinists, Arnold Toynbee, Sir John Plumb, J.H. Hexter, while not forgetting that morally admirable but woefully misled and misleading Christian Socialist ...”

“... enticement and resistance, openness and enclosure ... a mesmerising presence’, according to Christopher Woodward (writing in John Soane, Architect, the lavish catalogue of the recent Royal Academy exhibition of Soane’s work). More mundanely, it is regularly identified as the source of one of the most familiar (and also much vandalised) symbols of ...”

“... Chanel and Jeanne Lanvin. Schiaparelli’s sporty, dress-yourself look suited women of action. Amy Johnson, who flew solo to Australia, was one, and, in a rather different vein, Mae West in Every Day’s a Holiday. West – whose billowing curves billowed a little more at each fitting, causing the somewhat snappish couturière considerable annoyance – was in ...”

“... by J.C. Bach. Frugal in his own habits, he was generous to others. He bestowed pensions on Samuel Johnson, Hume and Rousseau (he eventually gave one to Rousseau’s widow, the much despised Thérèse Levasseur). He built up an unparalleled collection of scientific instruments, now in the Science Museum. He founded the Royal Academy and supported it through ...”

“... his fictional version of the neighbourhood too closely resembled Black Marseille. James Weldon Johnson, who had spent the 1920s as executive secretary of the NAACP, went further, suggesting that McKay needed to return to America. ‘I feel very strongly that you ought to come and stay. New York is your market, and the United States is your field.’ So ...”

“... were prone to seek revenge. Arthur Dobbs deliberately set out to ruin the career and reputation of Christopher Middleton, who came back from Hudson Bay with news that there was no passage to the west. Dalrymple’s exasperation found an outlet in two public letters he wrote against John Hawkesworth, Cook’s editor; and of Cook himself, he observed: ‘I ...”

“... Ever since Samuel Johnson’s icy comment of 1775 – ‘How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?’ – British observers have felt a little sour about the American Revolution. For Tories like Johnson, the colonists were ungrateful wretches who had squandered the precious gift of British liberty ...”

“... other contributions to the Oxford History. The chapter on Southern Africa in the 19th century by Christopher Saunders and Iain Smith benignly suggests that ‘British troops repeatedly intervened to play a crucial role in supporting settlers who were unable on their own to displace African farmers.’ No attempt is made to describe what ‘intervention’ or ...”

“... world of words’ that Hector complains about in The History Boys.25 May. About the only lie Boris Johnson hasn’t (yet) told is that if we leave the EU the weather will be better.27 May, Yorkshire. The garden is at its best, just plumping out, with plenty of bluebells still, alliums and a huge bush of borage behind me as I write. My favourite water avens is ...”

“... one so far – well over two million words, and much more to come. Counsel assisting the Inquiry, Christopher Clarke QC, acting as a kind of master of ceremonies, opened the proceedings by saying that everyone present had read my various witness statements (and, later, Derek Humphry’s) and that he and other counsel representing interested parties had some ...”

“... wrote to Gilbert Murray – in that British tradition of biting melancholy that runs at least from Johnson to Larkin – ‘the state of mankind always had been and always would be a state of just tolerable discomfort,’ there was some comfort, and some justness, in that kind of truthfulness. Even if perfectionism was covert religion, trying to get things ...”

“... almost all its works. Some astonishing remarks are made in this connection, the opinion that Dr Johnson ‘read nothing’ being the most spectacular. Richard Brinsley Sheridan is another plagiarist; Pope was a complete hypocrite; Kant was another who ‘had never read a book’; Goethe was simply no good. De Quincey, in the words of a genuine student of ...”

“... The more the English bardified Shakespeare, the more their big guns fired at Ossian. Samuel Johnson harried the Highlands and directed the ordnance. Later, Shakespeare was placed at the core of the English educational system, with Burns usually nowhere to be heard. As England has grown less and less secure about its position as a stateless nation, the ...”

“... Security Agency – illegal under the US constitution but condoned by the then president, Lyndon Johnson. Pincher, who had the information ‘off the street’ from someone who worked for a cable firm, corroborated the facts with the Post Office, but before he published the story sought guidance from the D-notice Committee, an arcane protocol which was meant ...”

“... ground, which suited both the landscape and its fabulously wealthy owner, who had, Brown told Dr Johnson, a chest full of gold in his bedroom. Not everything in Brown’s astonishingly successful practice went smoothly. Lakes sometimes leaked. At Audley End there was a misunderstanding about which way the river was meant to bend and at Cambridge he made a ...”